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When the fog is so thick that it shrouds your steps, a man tends to move with less confidence. So it is with Dean Spanos and Co. as they contemplate an expiring labor contract and the uncertainty surrounding the 2011 season.

Not so, however, with the New York Jets.

The signing of left tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson to a six-year, $60 million contract extension gives the Jets a large leg up in pursuit of the Super Bowl and leaves the Chargers a slightly wobblier stance in their ongoing impasse with their own blindside Pro Bowler, Marcus McNeill.

Granted, San Diego is not New York. Furthermore, the Chargers are neither opening a new stadium in the fall nor scrambling to sell overpriced, underwanted Personal Seat Licenses that have already been deeply discounted. Despite the NFL’s pronounced socialism, individual franchises continue to operate with profoundly different sets of circumstances, debt loads and business models.

One size never did fit all and no one deal necessarily dictates another.

Still, if the Chargers are understandably more risk-averse than the No. 2 football team in America’s No. 1 market, they are also likely to suffer by comparison. Vis-a-vis the Chargers, the Jets appear to be an outfit inclined toward one-upmanship.

Having bumped the Bolts from last season’s playoffs and having embraced both the discarded LaDainian Tomlinson and the discounted Antonio Cromartie, the Jets appear committed to a strategy of making San Diego squirm. In extending Ferguson’s deal with two years remaining on his current contract, the Jets have helped to legitimize McNeill’s grievances and possibly prolonged his holdout.

Ferguson’s new deal reportedly gives him $34.8 million in guaranteed money, a record for an offensive lineman. If McNeill is worth somewhat less — he was the 50th pick in the same 2006 draft in which Ferguson was chosen fourth, and has been more susceptible to injury — he should not be made to worry about his next million meals.

McNeill’s agent, Alvin Keels, reacted to word of Ferguson’s deal Wednesday with a triumphant Twitter post: “6 years/$60 million/$35 million guaranteed for D’Brickashaw Ferguson with 2 years left on his (contract). Another premium deal for a Left Tackle.”

The Chargers have their reasons, but they’re not operating in a vacuum.

In reducing their one-year tender offer to McNeill from $3.168 million to $600,000 last month, the Chargers effectively told the tackle that they were: A) willing to wait him out and B) prepared to play rough.

Their message to Chargers fans, however, came across as confusing. By formally lowballing both McNeill and wide receiver Vincent Jackson, the Chargers appeared to be pointlessly provoking two of their better players, both restricted free agents, calcifying resistance at a point in the negotiating process that called for compromise.

Though other NFL teams made similar moves, and other restricted free agents signed their original tenders under duress (notably Denver’s Elvis Dumervil), the Chargers’ position struck many fans as more punitive than tactical. To my mind, it has yet to be adequately explained.